As South Africa enters its first economic recession for 17 years, analysts and investors watched closely as new president Jacob Zuma laid out his policies in his inaugural state of the union address.

Creditors in the Saad and AHAB trading companies, two of the largest industrial groups in Saudi Arabia, have been left confused and annoyed by the lack of information surrounding the defaults of companies belonging to the group.

Omar Bongo, Gabon's longest serving president, has died of a heart attack on June 8 in a Spanish hospital at the age of 73. He had been president of the African nation since 1967. He is said to have stopped work in May, checking into a clinic in Barcelona, with reports claiming that he had cancer.
 

Syria hopes to attract FDI into the country via privatisations and public-private partnerships, says a source at the IFC.

On February 27, the largest multilateral investors and lenders in Eastern Europe – the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank – have pledged to provide up to €24.5bn to support the banking sectors in the region and to fund lending to businesses hit by the global economic crisis.

The pessimistic predictions of Nouriel Roubini, professor at NYU Stern Business School and founder of RGE Monitor, have been proved uncannily accurate. Here, he says that the US and UK banking sectors are mainly insolvent, and that rather than propping up ‘zombie banks’, it may soon be time to nationalise most of the sector.

An estimated 3,000 cars have been dumped at Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports by expat workers leaving the country after losing their jobs. Many still have keys in the ignition. It is a sign of the times in credit crunch Dubai.

The managing director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has sent a letter to the G-20 heads of government and institutions, saying the IMF’s funds could be perceived as “inadequate” to deal with the global financial crisis, and calling on the G-20 to provide more money.

The EU commission on competition has raised concerns about the Austrian government’s €2.7bn bail-out of Erste Bank at the end of October. Erste Bank is one of the largest banks in Austria and in central and eastern Europe.

Investors in Mongolia say the country’s lively but fractured political landscape is putting the economy at risk and holding back significant investments by foreign multinationals.

In late October, the government of Kazakhstan offered to buy 25% stakes in the top four banks in the country, for a total of over US$5bn, through its investment vehicle, Kazina. The deal still needs to be approved by the banks’ shareholders.

The governor of the Bank of Latvia, Ilmārs Rimšēvičs, says he is confident that Latvia is not going the way of Iceland. “The short-term debt of Iceland is twice as high as the total gross external debt of Latvia. Moreover, half of the banks’ short-term debt is in fact long-term”, he told an investor conference in London on November 4.